what does collate mean

What does collate mean?

When it comes to documents with multiple pages that you need to get in print, one question that you will get from your printing company “Do you want your printed documents to be collated or uncollated?” So what does collate mean? Collate is a verb that indicates that there are a number of items that are combined and collected in a proper order. The way in which it applies to printing is that the electronic files that contain the information that will get printed See the following collate examples

PDF document or Word processor files are the most common digital used to produce a collated or an uncollated job.

Collated printing examples: Different collated printing jobs can look different, so here are some examples. In every example we assume that multiple copies of each document are necessary.

When a document is long enough to print in multiple pages (because it won’t fit in one single page), collated printing will get you a printed document where page after sheet and page of paper after sheet of paper, the original sequence is respected. We can represent it with the following graph that show that the information to be printed comes from a digital file and what the finished printed job would look like. Since multiple copies of the same original are created, there will be multiple groups of collated documents as a product of the job.

When a printed document requires divisions within, such as chapters, sections, special tab sheets are often used. Other times the way to indicate sections is by the use of a sheet that uses a different thickness (example cover stock as opposed to text weight).